WWE Smackdown Live Highlights This Week: Final USA Network Episode

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Commoner Chad Gable ruined the coronation ceremony of King Baron Corbin. Also, Brock Lesnar announced that he’ll be WWE Champion by the end of the October 4 edition of Smackdown. Sorry, Kofi. :(

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Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live for September 24, 2019.

Best: Daniel Bryan Is Still The Best Wrestler In The World

Honestly, who else could you send out there to have an 18-minute singles match with Erick Rowan? The match is good, it tells a good story, it’s set up by a quick passionate promo from Bryan and sets up a quick passionate promo from Bryan, and it makes Rowan look like a main-event level threat. If Rowan’s ever going to be an important character, he’s got to be able to have top level singles matches like this. That’s what makes the pairing with Bryan so great. Pretty sure you could give Daniel Bryan 18 minutes against Nicholas Cone and he’d hand you back a handful of stars.

I have kissed Bryan’s butt pretty consistently in these columns since their inception (and for the 10 years before that, as a golden era Ring of Honor fan), but with good reason. Everything he does works. His timing is perfect. He knows the right thing to do to get the crowd behind him. He knows and trusts they’re going to do the “yes” chants with his kicks even though he just spent several months telling them not to, because they WANT to, and he’s giving them the chance. It’s built a lot like the Bryan vs. Lesnar match from last year’s Survivor Series, honestly, and that’s a great template for Rowan. Everything’s right. [chef kiss]

Also, this sets up Bryan and Roman Reigns vs. the Bludgeon Brothers for Hell in a Cell. Want to see a GIF from the end of that match?

Maybe I’m wrong. Who knows? Maybe Bryan aggressively assaulted witnesses who claimed his friend orchestrated an attack on Reigns. Maybe Bryan actually kidnapped a guy who kinda looks like Erick Rowan, put him in a hood, kept him backstage for two hours, revealed him to no reaction like a complete moron, and then immediately forgot about it. Maybe all these Bludgeon Brothers attacks that make sure to include Daniel Bryan are on the level, and he’s not the evil mastermind behind the entire thing and the driver of the car that hit Roman. Additionally, maybe monkeys will fly all the way out of my butt.

I just hope they include a promo where he screams IT’S ME, ROMAN, IT WAS ME ALL ALONG into a microphone.

Best/Worst: Ali Vs. Bomaye

In a vacuum, Ali vs. Nakamura was a lot of fun and teased some really ambitious stuff. Ali’s almost always fantastic in the ring — that head-into-the-post spot where he just flung his body at the ground like a late ’90s WCW luchador was pretty intense — and Nakamura’s still got it if his opponent’s game and he’s not getting overbooked into oblivion.

That said … are you guys really trying to tell the, “what would happen if Ali could upset the Intercontinental Champion,” story here? “It might earn him a future title shot!” You mean like several weeks ago when he upset the Intercontinental Champion, and everyone just forgot it? And then Sami Zayn cut a promo about how Nakamura was “different” now, which I guess invalidates a challenger pinning a champion in a non-title match, and he has to do it again for it to count? Did Nakamura change blood types between the beginning of August and the middle of September?

Great talent working a good match with a bad finish and an even worse dedication to story and consequence. Just all over the place.

Speaking Of Being Overbooked

“24/7 rules are suspended when the 24/7 champion is wrestling” is somehow the very dumbest thing in WWE. It feels like the one prime directive of the 24/7 Championship with a big 24/7 on the front is that it should be defended 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right? If you want to keep the riff raff out of the match while it’s being defended, you could do THAT, because the belt’s still being defended in a one-on-one wrestling match or whatever. But why put the 24/7 Championship on someone you’ve booked in a match and don’t want the 24/7 division involved in? Why not just not book that match, or have someone win the championship before that person wrestles? Better yet, why not have fun with the unique way the rules change your matches and booking organically, instead of creating something and running away from it? WWE would be 100 times better if they thought more than a month ahead and enjoyed the shit they create, instead of trying to change or forget it as soon as possible. Every tag team, I’m looking in your direction.

Charlotte Flair and Carmella versus Sasha Banks and Bayley is a logical followup from last week, and it’s good to see Carmella remember her pre-existing relationships with other characters and get involved, but it’s mostly here to set up the Four Horsewomen tag for the Fox Smackdown. That’s fine. It’ll be great. Maybe if Becky’s her tag team partner, Charlotte won’t just stand on the apron like an asshole watching Carmella tap out and lose the match. The water-treading is almost over!

Also On This Episode

At the very end of the night, Sasha Banks attacks Becky Lynch for making the save for Charlotte and gives her the old Andersons “push their face into the cage mesh” treatment. If there’s one thing modern fans and WWF fans in general will never understand the greatness of, it’s being a small child and watching a grown-ass, balding man you hate drag your hero across a chain-link fence like they’re trying to murder him with a cheese grater. Sasha trying to push Becky through it like she’s dying on the Event Horizon is a fine modern equivalent.

RIP in peace Kofi Kingston’s hopes and dreams, 1981-2019.

The New Day hasn’t looked great lately, as they’ve mostly gotten their asses handed to them every week by Randy Orton and The Revival, so they pick up a strong, easy win over The B-Team. My biggest hope here is that the renewed usage of The B-Team means Bo Dallas is going to return to NXT, and maybe Curtis Axel will denounce his amalgamated family name and finish writing the Genesis of McGillicutty. You laugh, but if McGillicutty, Titus O’Neil, and Huskis the Pig Boy attacked Johnny Gargano or whoever and KAVAL made the save, you’d pop.

Okay, well, *I* would.

The Kabuki Warriors got a match! And they got to WIN it! Just when you thought Carmella holding the 24/7 Championship had totally relegated Asuka and Kairi Sane to 10 seconds of hapless on-screen running, the Kabuki Quantum Fighters get a clumsy but still relatively dominant win over Fire, and her friend Desire.

Real quick, I want to say how hilarious the line, “What’s better than being on the cover of Maxim Australia?” from Mandy Rose was. I want them to put Mandy on the cover of The Back Woodsman and use it to start a Fire and Desire/Brock Lesnar/Paul Heyman love rectangle. Add Otis to make it a pentagon:

Tucker Knight deserves the friend of the year of the award for leaning over Otis’ shoulder, slapping him in the shoulder, and cheering, “MY MAN!” while his tag team partner gets a boner.

Mike Kanellis and Chad Gable discuss how short Chad is for several minutes to set up 25 seconds of wrestling. God bless Mike Kanellis for getting half a million dollars a year in guaranteed money to get called dickless and work a maximum of two minutes a week because AEW exists and WWE’s terrified to let anyone go.

Memo to WWE: please come up with something for your spectacularly talented and suddenly popular babyface to do besides get called short every week, especially if it’s by guys exclusively under six-feet tall themselves. At least when Baron Corbin did it, it was coming from a tall guy.

Finally, Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon agree to have a ladder match to settle their disputes, as you do in pro wrestling. I want to see the McMahon story over as much as the next guy and this finally looks like where they’re gonna do it, but it’s hurt by, you know, Shane completely no-selling all previous match stipulations like this. Remember when he had to beat the Undertaker to gain control of WWE, lost, and then his dad gave him power anyway? Remember when Owens put his career on the line at SummerSlam, won, and then got fired a couple of weeks later? And McMahon was constantly like, “pfft, none of this matters?” Not getting my hopes up, is what I’m saying.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

AddMayne

I think they legitimately forgot Buddy exists

JayBone2

BRYAN: You have to call me Dragon.
REIGNS: You have to call me Nighthawk.

AwkwardL0ser

Asuka should just run out of the arena and to the DMV, if she changed her name she can sign a contract somewhere else and Vince wouldn’t notice.

troi

Smart move by Kevin.There is zero chance Shane can climb a ladder without literally exploding

AshBlue

They really should have Asuka (or Nikki) break Mandy’s face and give her Cody’s old mask and gimmick.

Pdragon619

Wait… what is Kana from Kana-chan TV doing in a wrestling ring? I hate when WWE does these celebrity guest matches.

dl316bh

I’m really enjoying how Kofi sounds like an actual human being giving what you’d expect from an interview like this. He’s just enthusiastic, know what he’s up against, but confident because he’s been a successful fighting champion. Feels like promos and such worry so much about the spectacle and the larger than life part they miss that.

MachiavelliX

Ah, the SERIES finale of Smackdown on USA. Will we find out the last few years have all taken place in Shane McMahons head as he falls from the top of the cell trying to elbow drop Taker? And that in reality does not only miss Taker, bur misses the table entirely, landing on Micheal Cole and permanently damaging his vocal chords? Please?

Harry Longabaugh

For the love of god, SDL, please go with the season two finale of Walking Dead and write Shane off this show.

The Real Birdman

El Rey Network

Next Week:

Smackdown moves to Fox, and I start working on Friday nights! Oh boy!

Featured:

Kofi Kingston losing the WWE Championship to Brock Lesnar
The Four Horsewomen vs. whoever does the airbrushing on these Fox Smackdown graphics
Hell in a Cell, only two days later!

Thanks for reading the final installment of the Best and Worst of Smackdown Live on USA Network. Join us next week for a new era! Drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show, and give us a social media share to help keep us in business. See you next week on State TV!